This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021. Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2021-05-29

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This section provides an overview of the RTH rate per year divided by species.

Overall RTH Rate

This table covers all strays and RTHs. Animals classified as Unweaned are excluded from stray and RTH calculations. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTO outcome out of all strays.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, they are slightly lower than the HASS average, which are at about 30% RTH rate (for dogs), and show a small decline in 2021 compared to previous years.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 763 9 0.01
Cat 2020 716 13 0.02
Cat 2021 307 7 0.02
Dog 2019 1906 501 0.26
Dog 2020 1424 388 0.27
Dog 2021 703 156 0.22

Field RTH Rate (dogs)

This one only counts animals who came in as strays from the field, using the intake subtype field and counting anything with the word ‘field’ in it. Additionally, we also look at the return rate in the field vs that in the shelter, using the outcome subtype field. Cats are excluded because there are very few of them.

The table shows that in 2019 there were 1105 strays coming in from the field, of which 123 were returned in the field (11%) and an additional 216 were returned from the shelter (20%), leading to a total of 31% return rate for field intakes. In 2020 this rate was 34% and in 2021 it was 33%, which are both higher than the overall RTH rate shown in the previous tab. This suggests that the RTH of over-the-counter dogs would be lower (next tab).

Year Strays RTH_Subtype RTH_Count RTH_Rate
2019 1105 Field RTH 123 0.11
2019 1105 Shelter RTH 216 0.20
2020 803 Field RTH 106 0.13
2020 803 Shelter RTH 171 0.21
2021 286 Field RTH 33 0.12
2021 286 Shelter RTH 60 0.21

Shelter RTH Rate

This shows the numbers only for strays that were public drop offs (anything that does not have field in the subtype). Indeed, the rates are slightly lower than field intakes for dogs across all years, and has been slowly decreasing from 20% to 18% to 15%.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 748 8 0.01
Cat 2020 703 11 0.02
Cat 2021 304 7 0.02
Dog 2019 801 162 0.20
Dog 2020 621 111 0.18
Dog 2021 417 63 0.15

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Overall RTH

Despite the zig-zags, the RTH rate for dogs seems to be slowly improving from Jan 2019 to May 2020, and since then it has been slowly decreasing.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake.

Stray Intakes by Month

Dog numbers post May 2020 were lower than before, so it is interesting that it also seemed to have been harder to achieve a similar RTH rate when there were fewer animals coming in – we would love to hear how this played out in your experience.

Stray Intake Subtypes

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 14 days for dogs and 10 for cats when looking at the average.

That means that every successful RTH saves 14 days of care on average at Pasco County Animal Services, and field RTH would save an extra day or two on average for RTH from the shelter.

This could translate to pretty significant cost savings at scale – assuming a daily cost of care of 30$, if 250 more dogs were returned home in 2021, it would have saved Pasco County Animal Services about $105,000 in costs of care. This is a fairly simple calculation, but it gets at the magnitude of the potential benefits.

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 1468 12.54
Cat RTO 29 2.10
Dog Other Outcomes 2894 15.96
Dog RTO 1045 1.74

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per census tract.

The data in this section includes stray animals for which found addresses were present. Out of all strays in the data, only 39 had a found location of the shelter address, which is a reasonable percentage, but about 2000 animals had unusable found locations for mapping – primarily street names with no number or intersection. These had to be removed, so the mapping below only shows those animals who did have workable data. Fewer animals were removed because their found location included landmarks (like ‘railway’) and highways (which are harder to geocode for Google, apparently). Animals outside Pasco County were also removed for simplicity of mapping (~100).

After this filtering, the data below (number of strays, rate of RTH, RTH gap) is shown for 2494 dogs of which 599 were RTH. This filtering was harsher for cats as it left only 161, which is too little to make a reliable map.

Stray Intake

RTH Rate

Note that the area with the highest stray intake also has among the lowest RTH rate (top right).

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists - it shows the number of strays NOT returned to home in each area. As the RTH rate is fairly low in the areas with the highest stray intakes, it looks pretty similar to the first map.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
Hicks Rd and Hudson Ave Hudson Florida 25
between markham street and loy street NPR Florida 17
301 AND COMMER Lacoochee Florida 12
Celeste Drive and Congress Street New Port Richey (City) Florida 12
Oleander Dr NPR Wesley Chapel Florida 12
54 and 41 Land O Lakes Florida 11
6934 calvert ave NPR Florida 10
9900 Grace Dr Port Richey Florida 10
Lock St and 12th St Dade City Florida 10
HUNT CLUB LANE 9035 Port Richey Florida 9

Census Data

Map

This map shows different demographic information for Pasco County.

Strays x Poverty

One example of using both the census data and shelter data is below – there is a clear positive correlation between stray intakes and the percentage of people living under the 100% poverty line.

Microchip Analysis

In this version, we did not have microchip information yet, which we could obtain through a more extended report (Intake with Results Extended). However, since the subtype fields are used to separate animals with/out ids, we used this field to look at ID prevalence and how it affects RTH rates.

How many animals come in with an ID?

The following table breaks it down by species. There are more dogs and coming in with IDs (9.7%) than cats (0.2%), but both percentages are very low.

Species Identification Count Ratio
Cat FALSE 8125 99.8%
Cat TRUE 19 0.2%
Dog FALSE 7273 90.3%
Dog TRUE 782 9.7%
Other FALSE 99 100%

RTH Rate with/out an ID

This comparison is stronger after also making sure animals compared are similar on other characteristics, such as intake condition and age. But to get a first impression, for cats the RTH rate with IDs is 37% compared to 1% without one, whereas for dogs, there is a 56% RTH rate for dogs with IDs vs 14% without IDs.

The difference is obviously high, but it is worth also thinking about what might make the ‘yes’ category be at 56% as opposed to 100% (since there is presumably an owner), such as owners refusing, fees, wrong details on the chip, etc.

Species Identification Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat FALSE 1915 22 1%
Cat TRUE 19 7 37%
Dog FALSE 3319 605 18%
Dog TRUE 782 440 56%

ID Prevalence - Mapping

This section shows the ID rate (% of animals who came in with an ID) from each Census tract, as well as the number of animals coming with without an ID from each Census tract.

Dogs - ID Rate

the following map shows the proportion of animals who came with an ID. It looks like the areas that stood out for intake volume also have pretty low ID prevalence – so the next map, showing the ID Gap, will be pretty similar to the intake map.

Dogs - ID Gap

The following map shows the number of strays that came in without an ID from each area. The areas that stand out tend to overlap with those with the higher stray intake.

Distances Traveled by RTH Animals

This section examines animals that had an RTH outcome and both a found location and an outcome address listed to find out how far away from home are animals (primarily dogs) found.

Adequate location data was available for 620 strays with an RTH outcome. For each, the listed intake address and owner addresses were geocoded (using Google’s geolocation service), and then the distance between the two points was calculated. 19 addresses were removed due to error in geocoding with a distance of more than 50 miles between the two points. Some of these can be corrected if needed. This filtering left a total of 601 animals, 586 of which were dogs.

The distribution of distances is shown in the following figure.

Of these 601 animals, 64% were found less than a mile away from home, and 20% were within 1-5 miles from home. A quarter of those found within a mile were in fact within a block (~500 ft.) from where they were eventually returned to. Another way to look at it is that the median distance dogs were found from home is half a mile. These percentages are in line with other communities we’ve looked at.

Distance.Category Num.Animals Ratio
5+ Miles 93 15.5%
1-5 Miles 122 20.3%
More than a Block, Less than 1 Mile 279 46.4%
Up to a Block 107 17.8%

Data Notes

  1. Found location - as mentioned above, many animals had to be removed from mapping because of unusable found locations – primarily street names with no number or intersection. This means the mapping shown above is incomplete. Using name+number, block numbers, or intersections would improve mapping abilities.

  2. It is noteworthy that you track animals coming with/out ID and would love to hear why you chose to capture that in the intake subtype field which also contains additional information rather than in a field of its own.

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show if we had the data for it:

  1. Distance traveled by lost animals – now it’s included!
  2. Reason for RTH failure when owner is found (if that is a common occurrence).
  3. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if you are using the lost and found report module in petpoint).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.